I suspect that many of our readers have either visited, participated in or in some way supported these wonderful student encampments to protest the genocide in Gaza. Over 2500 students and faculty have now faced arrest, suspension or other penalty and, in some cases, injury. They have been maligned by administrators, Zionists, law enforcement, the media and many politicians. But most important, they have courageously exposed the murderous Israeli onslaught and the complicity of the American government and institutions for all to see. Many demonstrators have also been educated themselves about the nature of this collusion and the nature of imperialism itself. They have had to ask themselves why is Israel so important to the US that it tolerates, that it enables, such heinous behavior, and they have had to consider the importance of this sole nuclear ally in the Middle East to US rulers.
But we must wonder what will happen to this movement once the school year ends? What will happen when the military conflict in Gaza ends, as it will? As the thousands chant “Free Palestine,” do they actually believe that this will happen? I think many do because it seems so right, so necessary. I do not. Zionists have been dedicated to eradicating Palestinians since the late 1800s, be it by displacement or destruction, a position held by every one of their leaders of the right or “left” through the present. When the expulsions of 1948 failed to displace one out of seven Palestinians from their new state, the Israelis created a second class citizenship and, not long after, a military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Now that Palestinians have come to outnumber Jews in the overall territory, the drive to decrease their number is amplified. So I foresee that a great number of Gazans will be killed or maimed or scarred physically and psychologically, perhaps forced into a much smaller enclave, perhaps exiled to the Sinai, but not free. Meanwhile, killing, arrests and seizure of land continue in the West Bank, as the Zionists and the US promote the survival of their corrupt Palestinian Authority (PA) partner. There is not a working class based movement in Palestine that can lead Palestinians nor a strong enough movement in other countries to achieve a better ending.
Currently, much of the leadership of the struggle to free Palestine in the US is in the hands of Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and the Palestinian Youth Movement. These groups have been militant, brave, and well organized. However, they both have one major flaw – nationalism. Although WOL declares itself to be internationalist, what they mean is “we believe that all people have the right to self-determination, and we stand in solidarity with all national liberation struggles across the globe resisting U.S. imperialism.” (https://wolpalestine.com/sample-page/points-of-unity/) As we have discussed many times on this blog, nationalism erases an awareness of class. Within every nationality, there are the elite, the pro-capitalists, and workers. Every national liberation struggle of the last century, valiant as they may have been, has simply imposed a new ruling class of the same ethnicity as the oppressed workers. From South Africa to Algeria to El Salvador and many more, the story is the same. The working class remains poor and oppressed. while a small ruling class profits The West Bank, under the rule of the PA, declares itself a capitalist society with a corrupt ruling class and massive inequality equal to that in the US. Hamas is a fundamentalist, sexist, elitist nationalist group that has long ignored and oppressed most Gazans and has left them open to mass murder and starvation in the current and past wars, providing no training, or means of survival to the majority. There is no group of any size that is uniting Palestinian workers for an anti-capitalist struggle and allying with workers of other nationalities.
Will the continuation of the occupation and oppression in Palestine mean this student movement will not continue? That could be if it does not grow into an anti-imperialist movement that focuses on the main imperialist, the US government. In order to gain the power to wage that struggle, students must ally with a much broader segment of the population, especially those who are in a position to make capitalism dysfunctional – workers and soldiers. As students at a university, they can investigate how campus workers are mistreated – underpaid and undervalued – and how the community is mistreated by displacements and land seizures. They can continue to demand divestment from imperialist ventures and from military related research and recruiting. They can ally with union members off campus who are waging struggles over working conditions and union policies. They can fight injustices in their community like racist police murders or lack of health care or decent schools. All of these issues highlight racism, which infects not only Zionism but every pore of US life. And they can unite with students at other campuses to become a broader more powerful movement, through existing or new organizations.
During the student struggles of the 1960s-70s against the Vietnam War and for the Civil Rights Movement, these same issues arose. The Worker Student Alliance of Students (WSA), a major faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Columbia (and elsewhere) led the way in enabling a longer and broader struggle than just the famous building occupation of 1968. By allying with the mostly black local Harlem residents whose park was being seized to build a Columbia gym and whose housing was being bought up by the University, students made an alliance with the community and the black and mostly white student organizations united. Nationally, the WSA supported General Electric strikers and others in the midst of anti-war protests. On campus, SDS fought against Columbia’s complicity with the Institute for Defense Analysis, a major Pentagon military research agency. Many students were won to fight racism, unite with workers and commit to the long-term struggle against capitalism.
Thus, the task for the active students of today is to turn their struggle for a free Palestine into a struggle for all workers and students to be free of imperialism. Students alone cannot seize power. Even students and workers together will need to wage a lengthy struggle, but it will not succeed if they do not overcome racism and nationalism so that the workers of the world unite. The capitalists of today’s world, who hold sway in every country, are on the path to the destruction of much of the world and its people, be it through climate change, epidemics or inter-imperialist war. We have no choice but to unite against them.
Please note that many ideas raised in this article with regard to racism, nationalism, class, imperialism, and the history of Palestine and Israel, are discussed at much greater length in many articles on the multiracialunity.org blog, which we invite you to consider.
Ellen Isaacs is a physician, anti-racism and anti-capitalism activist and co-editor of multiracialunity.org. She can be reached at [email protected].
